Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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the cult dream

Are you dreaming extra weird dreams during this pandemic? Bonus points if this is even weirder for you because of Shark Week hormones.

Last night I had a whopper, a real story line worth sharing.

THE CULT DREAM:

On a whim I attended some multi-cultural creativity retreats that turned out to be a cult. We were promised dream catchers and meditation and book studies, among other treats. And instead of a locked down compound, it was the kind of cult where you can leave, go home, and come back at your leisure, as long as you wear your name tag and sign up for enough community service.

Weirdly, most of the members didn’t seem to like anyone else in the group very much, but they acted happy. Everyone had glossy, curly hair, except me. They kept coming back for more and just stayed in tight little two or three -person cliques. The overall lighting was wanting.

As far as I could tell, the biggest “initiation” ceremony had to do with being submerged in a giant tank of choppy water and keeping just the tip of your nose exposed for breathing. It was scary, because you had to tread with your legs only, not use your arms to stay above water, and if just a few splashes of the water entered your nose, your chances were ruined. I don’t know what the prize was, besides membership, but tension was high. Drowning was the least of our worries.

We never got around to crafts or studying. Not even yoga. As far as I could tell, the only special power held by cult members was the ability to hear animals’ thoughts as clearly as a person speaking English. Voices, accents, inflection, everything. This might be the bees knees and quite fun, except that the cult meeting room was filled with puppies who were terrified and in pain, and nobody cared. It was excruciating.

At some point, the whole cult took a field trip to the zoo, and the leaders were soon cornered in such a way that a secret lever was activated, and a giant fake hollow rock cave was lowered over them, trapping them. Like a real Scooby Doo moment. My husband was suddenly there with me, and he said, chuckling, “How’s it feel to be caught?” Hehe.

The confusion reigned for a while longer, and I eavesdropped on several conversations about who was there and why and who they hated most and why. The leaders’ entrapment did little to soften the mood, apparently. And nobody took the opportunity to leave.

Then a meeting was called to order, and without warning I was dismissed for all of eternity, rejected and barred by the whole cult. My offense? Writing too many inspirational messages on the walls. The walls were plain, exposed lath and plaster, horizontal relics of twentieth century home construction, perfect for sentences.

I left the cult, hurt by the rejection but also relieved to have my freedom.

The End.

You‘re in a cult, call your dad!!

monday, jack handey style

Today was as Mondayish as Mondays get around here. I procrastinated and then wrecked my treadmill workout and barely got four miles to register on my Garmin. My good intentions for a shampoo and manicure never came to fruition. Also, a possum was in the chicken feed bin and we terrified each other and screamed right at each others’ haggard faces. I did get almost all of my work list accomplished, though, including every speck of sweeping, laundry and ironing, and so far am keeping healthy despite some mean germs floating around. Tonight I am going to indulge in a brain-purge and call it good. Onward to Tuesday!

stop

Song lyrics by Dido: “No love without freedom, no freedom without love.”

On a recent episode of The Daring Romantics podcast, Lindsey Eryn offers encouragement to finish the calendar year strong, to keep up your good momentum. She suggested, among other actionable things, that we spend three hours per week on “future” projects, on goals that propel us forward. This feels so familiar and good. Back in my mutual funds selling days, we had marketing that used actual galvanized buckets as visual aids to illustrate short term, middle term, and long term financial planning: “Cash-Income-Growth. ” Time is as valuable as money. How we spend it could be divided into “work for this day,” or cash, “work for tomorrow and short term progress” or income, and “work for the future,” or long term growth goals. Love it.

Bob Goff reminds us:

“God never promised we’d have all the answers. What He offers to us is a box of crayons and the opportunity to let love draw bigger circles around the people we meet than they thought were possible.”

Joy is a super power. It truly is. Joy overcomes, transcends, illuminates, and emulsifies so many other efforts. It is the whole point, as someone else once said.

A local blogging friend of mine shared with me that she has been blogging less because she and her husband have been happily burdened with other projects. They are discovering fulfillment in other efforts, in family and a brand new ministry projects, and they love it. She described it as being “pulled by things eternal,” and being at peace with retreating from some of the more public activities. I love this.

One day last month I noticed an online blurb about it being “Fibonacci Spiral Day.” Of all the frivolous special days on the imaginary world calendar, this one made me happy. Jocelyn was the first person in my life to get really excited about it. She used to love talking about it on our hikes in Colorado, just the two of us, memories I will forever treasure. Since then I have noticed it in so many areas of life. So much synchronicity, you wouldn’t believe. And I have heard a few friends mention it here and there,  most recently Julia. Life cycles, patterns, descending and expanding ratios. Beautiful, pulsing repetition. It is mesmerizing on every level, how the Universe offers me this cellular rhythm. Julia lost her Dad this week, and I felt her pain like a hammer on my chest all the way from California. Send some comforting wishes in Julia’s direction. And please pray for Jocelyn, friends.

I have been reading and listening to podcasts a lot on the physical and spiritual benefits of fasting, far removed from fat loss. Amazing. Exciting! So many health benefits and so much long standing tradition. Handsome and I touched briefly on the topic of Biblical references to different sorts of fasts, different lengths and purposes, the meanings behind number of days, etc. Really interesting. Our bodies and spirits are so beautifully aligned. More synchronicity, more patterns.

Psalm 118:24 and so many other love notes from God, reminding me to stay present. Stay in this day and re-joy myself. We are designed to handle this much at once. This moment is where we can affect change. Today is gorgeous and perfect and is a gift.

Cannot stop thinking about the nature or character of God, gender or no, remote or internal (both?), timeless no doubt. I just have these creeping tendrils of curiosity about heaven and hell, too, because (feel free to call me crazy) I just don’t think these are future geographies or eventual destinations. I don’t believe we are on our way to either place, exactly. I believe more and more that we choose our heavenly or hellish state day to day, moment by moment. Our thoughts, our choices, the lives we design for ourselves, both the physical structures and habits and the interior landscapes, our relationships, all of it. All of it combined becomes our realities of personal paradise or personal torture. Okay. Feel free to ignore that thought. It is not quite complete anyway.

Also, just one more weird twisty thought please: I am gleaning so much from so many different sources that gets me feeling like our moral instruction is not about how we should be living, but rather, it all is just informing us about how the universe operates, how we can best thrive within the normal operating systems already in place. So it’s less about good and evil and more about alignment and friction. Typing those words make it seem suddenly and eye-rollingly elementary. But for me it replaces shame and false authority with calm and boldness. It’s a subtle but powerful shift in perspective. Leaves lots more room for co-creativity and for JOY! Okay, I’m done.

Seneca, paraphrased: “As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” This is exactly what Carpe Diem means to me. Identifying what is unique and brief about the next slice of time before us, and making the most of those details., Also, seeing the best in a day, squeezing from it all the molten-lava-JOY you can! 

Quite out of the blue this past week, while doing some much needed, very average housework, I remembered lyrics from an ancient Christmas hymn: “That hope can flower from our grieving, that man can catch his breath and turn transfixed by faith.”

And here is a gem from Ann Voskamp, whose Advent book The Greatest Gift is sustaining me again:

“Sometimes the heart of waiting for the gift is the art of the gift.”

The waiting for the gift can be my art. My Advent. A way of staying awake and engaged with life, not just coasting, not numbing myself with running or cooking or doing rote chores in a passionless way. How we live and how we thrive in the midst of waiting for miracles matters very much. It can be a form of worship, the thankful and trusting spirit we harness and exude during dark times.

Have you ever thought about what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph while they searched for Jesus for THREE DAYS and he was just casually in the temple?? AHHH They suffered. Besides the foreshadowing of three days in the grave and the suffering they would do then, this briefly mentioned story in the gospel of Luke really gut-punched me this week. What a thing, to be asked to trust God with your child with no promise of how the story will end. And yet, who better to trust?

Ok. One last thing. What are the meaningful differences between yoga and stretching? How much does breath-work matter? And meditation? Can you stretch “cold” and still get the benefits, physically?

Also, can you get rabies if a possum screams his breath directly at your open mouth?

‘Bye!

friday 5: favorites this week & random photos

001 Fave Music: Lately I have been happily immersed in a deep, cleansing catalog of Halsey’s voice and all that watery, rhythmic music she offers. Her stuff is all at once abrasive and soothing of the injury she inflicts, ha. Halsey reminds me of Jocelyn for this quality and also because it was on a trip to Colorado that my beautiful firstborn first introduced me to this artist. Really talented, really beautiful, achingly sweet and angry. Enigmatic in the best feminine ways. It has been perfect music for these rainy days lately when I am indoors cleaning, cooking, and ironing. Have you heard her version of Walk the Line? Love it.

002 Fave Eats & Drinks: Refrigerator-pickled garden vegetables, Tex-Mex style. Especially if they can be eaten with a generous helping of my friend Kellie’s homemade guacamole. Oh man, so good. I am also loving deluxe mixed nuts and shredded balsamic chicken thighs (not breasts), in other words FATS as per my monthly cravings, ha. And plain iced tea is my favorite drink right now. Last weekend, at two consecutive events, we were served really strong, deliciously fresh iced tea, which I hadn’t had in months, so this week I have kept a gallon of it brewed in the fridge. Unsweetened, it has been a nice switch from diet soda.

003 Fave Fitness: Strength!! After a few months of slowly incorporating more “strength” days and gradually edging out miles here and there, I am really loving a very different routine. How different? Well, a of today, I have only logged 18 miles all week, which is how much I would normally get by Tuesday, easy. Yet I feel leaner and more energetic, crazy! My daily/weekly workouts are now pretty centered on weighted circuits, with cardio and running interspersed as I have time or the craving. This is a huge learning curve for me, and kind of an addiction-breaker, but for now I love it. This routine saves time, because I have a gym here in the barn, eliminating the need to drive to a trail or paved park sidewalk six days per week. I am liking the slow (and sustainable) body composition changes, too. Runner up for fave fitness: Lots of marathon inspiration from friends. I plan on starting a new training cycle in late July, for a fall race. I am VERY excited to see how these weeks of strength and fat loss help with that! In the mean time, I am still watching my friends crush goals left and right. Lots of inspiration, not a drop of envy. That feels great.

004 Fave Emotions: I am deeply thankful for a sense of truce with old enemies, people with whom I have had friction, even deep injury, in the past. God has laid a blanket of peace over so many old battle grounds, and I am more thankful than I can express. Another favorite emotion this week has been joy. Day after day, no matter the circumstances, Love has been uprooting anger and worry and allowing joy to bubble up instead. It comes quite unbidden at times, other times with some effort. But it is all delicious, and I am better at everything because of it. More, please.

005 Fave Reading: Tara Westover’s Educated has me captivated. I missed an entire day of reading this week while we were pretty glued to the weather channels (no tornadoes though, thankfully), and by evening I was in a panic to grab at least a few pages. She is eloquent, expressive of both physical and emotional landscapes, and her story overall is relatable and astonishing. A couple of smart friends are reading this along with me, and I cannot wait to discuss.

Now 5 random photos!

spring garden veggies
?

I hope you can take a few minutes to soak up the best of this past week, whatever is happening in your world. May the weather be kind (we feel so fortunate at the Lazy W this week, whew!). May your enemies be at peace with you. May your health and sense of abundance overflow! And I hope your upcoming weekend is all you need it to be. Thanks for checking in!

“No I won’t smile
but I’ll show you my teeth.”
~Halsey
XOXOXO

more new than ever before

I find myself wondering whether this springtime is among the most luscious of all my life or my eyes and heart are simply more open than ever before. Everything feels new, but more than new; everything has a wet, trembling quality, and it feels like more than just the abundance of rainfall.

When seeds germinate and break through the topsoil lately, they seem to do so with music playing. When the chicks run across their flight pen, they return the other direction a full size bigger. And have you heard the news that one of our young hens has learned to quack, no doubt by living with two ducks? The skies are probably the same colors as before, but more crystalline, more kinetic. The pine trees are growing arms and fingers and reaching for brand new ideas, learning new languages I think. Walking around the farm, you can smell fresh energy like it’s incense or very good cookies and bread baking.

Old thought patterns are falling apart like charred wood, burned (I believe) by truth. And I can leave them where they fall or sweep them up and replace them with better thoughts, stronger ones, more loving ones, more exciting ideas about life and God and all of our complex human relationships. Fear is almost fully edged out now, and the Worry Door has not cracked open in so long.

A new friend recently loaned me her treasured paperback copy of Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. Somehow this author had been completely foreign to me, and now I want time to stop so I can gobble up all of his work, because his term “Christian spirituality” is right on target for my life. Here are a couple of passages that have struck me beautifully this past week:

I believe the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather to have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.”

I love that. And it speaks straight to me, because I am such a creature of habit. I thrive on not only physical daily routines but also meditative practices, which certainly have value. But when little interruptions ruffle my feathers or when I am so cemented in habits that I am wasting time, it all has a kind of soundproofing effect between God and me. Don’t get me started on excessive volunteering or millions of obligatory social connections.

Okay, and then this:

Passion is tricky, though. because it can point to nothing as easily as it points to something.

Somewhere around that sentence in the book, Miller describes his thought process around what he would die for and what he is living for. It’s all kind of the front burner for me now. The moments when we might be asked to die for someone or something may come rarely, if ever, but every hour of every day we are actively or passively exchanging both our time and our life force, our God given human energy for something else. We give ourselves away in pieces, big and small, over and over again, and I wonder how many of those transactions are beneath us, how much of it is waste. A lot, you know? Maybe unintentionally? But so very much is exchanged for good, too, for strong, solid, worthwhile purposes. We trade our time and energy and human life force for love of family and friends, for personal passions that are linked directly to some aspect of our creation that leads us right back to God. How thrilling to see that our intrinsic passions can be connections to God and thereby pipelines for more abundant life. I love that we are all created in such unique ways and that He can draw us near and put us to work based on our passions. I want to find more ways to facilitate exactly that.

So. The farm. All of these nine acres are pure joy to me. The creatures who live here, even when they frustrate me, the plants, the wildness, the work and creativity, our romance and our human fabric, all of it. It has become my home and sanctuary, classroom and temple. And for all of the physical, sensory pleasures here, I know in my bones that the real magic is unseen. The real magic and power and drama can easily be extracted and reinvested elsewhere, should that time ever come. This is just the stage.

This is how I know the shimmer and pulse of our current season is owed to more than the mild Oklahoma springtime; God is doing something here with us that brings it all into focus for me. The old fears and worries are burned up and crumbling; worldly distractions are falling back and losing their noisy power in favor of birdsong in the morning and frog symphonies at night. More beauty than I have ever seen is front and center, both for the physical senses and for that part of me that can’t find the words. Hope, joy, belief in the power of Love, compassion for the weird things we all need and chase, patience, silliness, healing. Lots of healing. So much more.

I’ll take the flowers and the vegetables and even the snakes. I’ll take the skies changing and the air tasting like candy, as temporary as it all is. They are outward proof of an unseen Power. For me, this is something worth living for, day after day. Our lives are filled with more goodness than we can manage, despite our efforts to soak it in. And the shifting details just press me to live attentively, to find balance in movement too. It’s all constantly changing and never-ending. Such magic!

Thank you for introducing me to Donald Miller, Stefanie. My mind is churning from it all. Happy weekend, friends. I wish you magic and Love and clear vision.

“You have found the life underneath your life situation.”
~Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
XOXOXOXO

humpday headlines

Hello and happy Wednesday!! Life at the W is clicking right long, and I have a handful of thoughts to share in case you are cuddled up and in the mood to read. This blog post will be like my favorite outfits: Nothing matches, but it all feels right.

001 My friend Christina at Little Sprouts Learning is a genius. This past week she shared a natural solution for repelling the dreaded squash bugs: white radishes! Also this week I was reminded that starting a squash crop earlier than usual can give the vines a jump on their enemies’ life cycles. This strategy is simple, and it could give a bigger overall yield for the summer; we just have to have some late frost protection plans in our back pockets.

squash bugs… the bane of my garden existence… (2014)

002 Next week is Mardi Gras, and depending on how social plans shake out I might bake our King Cake this weekend. Rather than pull ideas from the internet, I decided to lean comfortably on a recipe from a little book I snagged a few years ago in the actual French Quarter, at my favorite used book store. King Cake is lot more like a yeast bread than cake, which means it might scratch this sourdough craving I can’t kick. Also? I am a lot better at baking bread than cake, as the following photo demonstrates:

003 Is it watermelon season yet? If not, can everyone please stop posting watermelon photos online? And can the grocery stores please stop selling cubes of the red fruit in plastic boxes for one million dollars, even though they probably taste like chewy tap water? Ok cool. On a happier note, I have ordered some fancy watermelon seeds for a new patch this year, wahoo!!

3 cheers for free shipping!

004 I want you to come see some improvements we are making to the farm! One visual treat is the east exterior side of the big barn, the side you see just as you pull your car up and around the gravel driveway:

It’s a happy work in progress, and I love it! The mural, hand painted by my favorite white collar-hobby farming-renaissance man, has been here a while, but we recently added that red “W” up top and have started rearranging a collection of miscellaneous signs, hubcaps, and license plates. Soon, those two plastic trough planters will be overflowing with sunflowers, cosmos, and maybe hollyhocks and trailing SPV, and the ground below will be crawling with fruit. This is where I’ll grow watermelons and a pumpkin patch this year. My thinking is that, compared to the front field, this area between the house and the horses gets a lot more daily foot traffic, so the deer are less likely to sneak in and rob us and I am less likely to forget to do the weeding and watering. Bam.

005 My husband started a Keto diet on January second, and I have a lot of feelings about it, ha. Since March is “National Nutrition Month,” I will save my thoughts for a post then. Until then, light a candle for me. (I am kidding, it’s fine. But seriously. Send haaaaalllp.)

006 Unrelated, or perhaps very related, I have continued on the fitness path of trading lots of miles each week for lifting (baby) weights), and I feel surprisingly great. It’s funny how you have to convince yourself that running less is totally allowed. I am ever so slowly shedding some fat and feeling stronger and leaner, head to toe. What’s even more exciting is that my aerobic fitness is improving, too. I grab faster intervals when I decide to, run more consistent tempo workouts, and finish virtually every run with energy to spare. Zero plantar pain and better endurance, both very good side effects. The slow, slight fat loss is just a bonus so far. I attribute healthier, happier feet to building stronger hips and lower abs. This makes all the difference to mileage goals, for me: Should I eventually commit to a marathon, I could not increase volume much with blistered heels and and screaming plantar. So, for the foreseeable future, baby weights a few times per week will stay in rotation with those glorious, refreshing miles. This has all been really good mental conditioning, too, this constant sense of missing out on how all my running friends are preparing. (Boston and OKC races are right around the corner!)

007 Winter is making a few unwelcome encores around here, but it’s still February, after all, and even an early spring should not be expected until sometime in March. We consciously grab hold of and enjoy every warm, gorgeous afternoon with which we are gifted, and we try to make really good use of the cold, grey days in between, complaining as little as our worn out, heat-loving spirits will allow. Soon enough, as last weekend demonstrated, we will be outside working so long and so exhaustively that this hibernation season will seem far off again and quite foreign. (February always seems so bizarre while we are in it and so far away once we escape. And it’s so short! Weird.) Oh, and how’s this for God having a sense of humor? This morning as we listened to another bitter cold weather forecast and tried to guess its duration, I flipped open my devotional and read this scripture from Acts 1:7, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power.” Ha! OK, ok, I get it. We can do zero to affect the weather, and there are greater things at play here. So we might as well just smile and make the most of it!

008 It’s Pisces season, okay? Spring is just so close. Let’s embrace a little magic and fluidity, and let’s welcome our intuition to the fling. What fling? The spring fling, of course.

Despite all the intensity of Pisces season, it’s also one of the most romantic and glamorous times of the year.

mindbodygreen

009 Please go read my friend Katie’s blog update on her garden. She and her husband work together in their Oklahoma City backyard to cultivate a space for flowers, culinary wealth, artwork, chickens and fresh eggs, grandchildren, and gobs of romance. They sound a lot like us, minus the grandchildren, ha! And we hope to accept their sweet dinner invitation soon!

010 What if the entire shade garden could be a spacious, concentric salad garden? All lettuces and kales, radishes, maybe some peas and… What else? Nasturtiums? Pansies? Cabbage! I want lots of food here to mix with the perennial coral bells, azaleas, and hydrangeas. The last couple of summers I accidentally grew too many tall sun lovers near the edge, so they not only visually blocked most of the expanse; they also leaned over dramatically to find the light. It was fun for a while, but it made mowing weird. And it eventually was just… confusing.

011 Have you read the Eckhart Tolle book, The Power of Now? My sister Ang recommended it to me, and I crave some discussion. So good. And much needed in my life. Thanks lady!!

That is it for my headline collection today, unless perhaps you are into discussing pregnancy scares for women in their mid forties? No? Ok, carry on. Have the loveliest evening possible! And don’t hate the cold too much. It really is almost over. Remember we are counting it all joy!! All of it!

“Even when the sky is heavily overcast,
the sun hasn’t disappeared.
It’s still there on the other side of the clouds.”
~Eckhart Tolle
XOXOXOXO